More and more when we eat bread—and this tragically includes tortillas—we spend the next day feeling all bloaty and sad about having ate the bread. Don’t get us wrong, we want to dip a crusty French bread heel into a soup so badly, and while we don’t know exactly why bread tastes better when you toast it (science, probably), we find the stuff popping up less and less in our home cooking life.
In pursuit of this terrible new reality, we’d heard tell that you can totally use ground chicken to create a carb-free/gluten-free pizza crust, and that’s what we did over the weekend. The results? Pretty good, honestly, especially for a first shot. We’ll share how we did it below, followed by some things we learned along the way.
You’ll Need
- A pound of ground chicken—breast works, but we’ve since learned that thighs or a darker meat might work a little better for the final consistency of the faux crust
- ½ cup grated parmesan cheese—the powdery type, not the shredded, which is important
- 1 tsp of some kind of herb, like oregano—we didn’t have any, so we used an herbs de provence blend that included rosemary, thyme and lavender (it was good, but oregano would have been perfect)
- ½ cup of some tomato sauce you like—we went with the lowest-cal version we could find at Whole Foods, which was the store’s 365 brand
- As much mozzarella as you like—we looked for low fat or a skim version to no avail, and we ultimately decided we don’t eat enough cheese day-to-day to have to worry about a couple extra calories…and if you need a specific number, roughly a ½ cup will work fine
- Some toppings—we went with babybell mushrooms, black olives and organic pork/beef pepperoni, though we think we might try the turkey pepperoni next time, and probably some green chile
- A big-ass bowl—big enough to put most of that stuff in, anyway
- Some kind of pan—if you have a round pizza pan or pizza stone, good for you, but if you don’t, a pan’s a pan, man, and you’ll be fine
- Parchment paper—you should just have this anyway
The Steps
- Preheat the oven to 425 before you start doing the stuff with the food
- Position parchment paper properly on pan
- Get your big-ass bowl and throw in the ground chicken, along with the grated parm and your herbs.
- Using your damn hands, mix everything together until it’s all congealed into what looks kind of like a dough ball, only you’ll know it’s chicken, mostly
- Transfer the mixture onto your be-parchment’d pan and knead out into whatever pizza shape you like. We went with round, though you could probably chase those Pizza Hut Bigfoot Pizza feels from your youth by going rectangle. Of course, then some poor dingus gets the center slices that don’t have the crust, and crust rules, so…yeah. You can also call them “pizza bones” if you like, and that’s a free tip from your pal, The Fork
- Note that you could use a second piece of parchment paper and a roller if you like, but we found the chicken mixture to be pliable enough to shape by hand, and that we’re aiming for a roughly inch-thick thickness (#DownWithTheThickness)
- Pop that bad boy in the oven for 20 minutes
- Pull that bad boy out and check for any moisture content. Ours wound up having a bit of a watery liquid pooling on top, which we dabbed off with a paper towel
- Pop that bad boy in there for another 10-15 minutes—that’s a total of 30-35 minutes, but do note that cooking times vary based on what kind of texture you’re going for. Par exemple, while the edges of our crust were certainly approaching a satisfactory golden-brown hue, we later wished we’d given it a few extra minutes to up the crispy factor; just keep an eye on it, Jack!
- Once you’ve got it outta the oven and you feel like it’s looking how you want it, let that bad boy cool for about five minutes or so, but don’t shut off the oven!!!
- Now that it’s five minutes later, get that tomato sauce and mozz and do the pizza thing. If you don’t know what that means, that’s really weird, because we all love pizza. Still, what we’re saying is, spread out your sauce and cheese the way you like, then add your toppings
- Pop that bad boy back into the oven for 7-10 minutes, or until the cheese looks all melty and delicious
- Pull that bad boy outta there and let it cool for 120 seconds, or however long you can hang before you just gotta taste it
- Go nuts on that bad boy
Things We Wish We Knew About Chicken Crust
- Oregano feels like a must in hindsight, even if our herb blend had an interesting taste that we did not dislike
- It’s hard to cut a smaller pizza crammed with toppings well, especially when the crust is not a crust as you already know it
- We wish we’d used a little less sauce, or at least not dumped the entire ½ cup on top—experiment a little
- Breast seemed not quite right, though we’ll experiment over time. It’s also possible our brain perceives pizza in one way, so when that way is changed (like using chicken in place of bread), it’s confusing—like when you think you’re about to drink orange juice, but it’s grapefruit juice. And it tastes disgusting for a second while you acclimate. And you remember the time you got so drunk on greyhounds in Las Vegas that you tried to engage in conversation with the weird person in the sad of-brand Hello Kitty costume on the strip, only they became too aggressive so you headed to Caesar’s for an insanely expensive buffet that was totally worth it, even if you barfed on the street shortly after to the thunderous applause of whatever absolute alcoholics happened to be nearby. It’s honestly exactly like that super-universal experience we just described in every conceivable way.
- This thing is more filling than you think, so maybe save it for when you have people to feed. We ended up with leftovers that we told La Forkette we were going to eat, but then we forgot them and now it’s too late because our brain is saying “old food!” at us about it,
- It might be worth almost burning the edges of this faux-dough just for that taste. You know what we mean when we say “that taste,” right? Yeah, you do.
The song that played in our head the whole time we were making the pizza
Also
- Everybody you’ve ever met in Santa Fe across the span of your life is suddenly all like, “Oh, have you not been to Leo’s? What are you, some kind of stupid idiot!” as if the new Thai/Malay joint on Hickox Street isn’t new as hell. It’s already gained some pretty major fan numbers. To answer your burning questions, we haven’t been yet, we don’t know when we’ll go, we are excited about it and we have heard good things. Leo’s is open Thursday-Monday, which means it’s closed on Tuesday and Wednesday, which is odd, but whatever. Find ‘em through their official website, but know they don’t take reservations, so good luck, we guess.
- Did you know downtown tapas joint La Boca turned 19 recently? That’s really wild to think about, really. We salute La Boca and its chef James Campbell Caruso. Believe us, local servers and foodservice workers vent to us a fair amount of the time, and we’ve never hard a bad word about La Boca’s owner/chef. Congrats, buds! If you want some good wine and good food, you should go to there.
- Somebody recently told us that Sweetwater Harvest Kitchen has adopted a pretty varied mocktail program under its new owners. That sounds cool to us since we don’t super drink booze, although we’re having déjà vu about this item like we maybe already told you. That’s ok, though, because we’re having dèjá rêvé about everyone forgiving us. We don’t have specifics yet, but or fellow teetotalers might wanna go check it out next time they have a craving for Sweetwater.
- We’ve been meaning to get over the to new Sweet Santa Fe choco (and more) shop now that it’s not all the friggin’ way at an outlet mall. Sure, we have feelings about the biz moving into the Marcy Street space that once housed our beloved Ecco Coffee and Gelato (miss you every dang day, Ecco!), but we’ve seen some social media posts and such that not only make us wanna go nuts on some truffles, but that showcase a beautiful, clean vibe. We’ll let you know if we make it over there.
The song that plays in our head whenever we think about chocolate
More Tidbits
- As a warning, the art for this piece from Food and/or Wine-dot-com is gross as hell, but since it’s all about a healthier gut, we figured we’d share the piece anyway. In case you didn’t know, gut health is, like, really important, man. Anyway, the thing is called a diversity jar, and it’s literally about putting a mix of plant stuff like nuts, seeds, grains and more into a jar for throwing onto salads and the like. They can explain it better here.
- Over on Eater-dot-com, you’ll find fewer stories about food/politics, which is kind of sad, but we still wanted folks to know that writer Khushbu Shah wrote a whole think piece about Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme, and that’s something we should all read. If’n you didn’t know, the Crunchwrap might be the greatest culinary innovation of our lifetime. Yeah, you heard us, Aumary Guichon with your bicycle-looking as chocolate sculptures! GO TO HELL, BEARD WINNERS! FUCK OUTTA HERE, RAMSAYS AND CHANGS AND FLAYS! THERE IS NO GOD, ONLY CRUNCHWRAP!
- Excuse us, there have been multiple cucumber recalls recently?! We’re always cuke-in’ it up, baby, and this is news to us (which we assume means it’s news to you). Anyway, with that nonsense going down, the minds at HuffPost food reached out to food safety experts to find out if we can keep cold cuke-in’ (please let that phrase catch on for describing eating cucumbers) safely.
- Should…should we all just go get Crunchwraps or at least shirts that express how much we love them from Albuquerque artist/musician/guitar pedal maker Dave Jordan?
Letters n’ Such
It has become apparent to us that we’re never gonna get back the correspondence magic from the old days. We respect that, y’all are busy. Still, we might need your help in email form for what happens in this section next now that no one wants to write to us anymore unless it’s to complain because we said “fuck.”
Should the end section of The Fork be about desserts and treats? Should it be even more random musings? Should we just end this dumb thing at the not-just-local news of More Tidbits? We’ve been at this a long time (partly in homage to the original Fork/journalist Rob DeWalt), and we’re open to changing, baby, if you just take us back!
Cold cuke-in’,
The Fork
